Does the Web change the way we think?
Image by margolove, used under the Creative commons license. Thanks to Will Richardson for pointing to this image.
In the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan observed that "the medium is the message" -- in other words the communication mechanism from which we receive a piece of information is more than just a dumb conduit. The communication mechanism -- a radio station or a news website, for example -- itself shapes (at least in part) how a person reacts to or thinks about the information s/he receives. Information can be communicated as a sound byte or as a lengthy article, as being scholarly or popular, or as being of critical importance or merely of passing interest. And how the communication mechanism treats a piece of information affects the level of significance a person attaches to that information.
It is with this idea in mind that Nicholas Carr poses the question "Is Google making us stupid?" in The Atlantic. Carr's idea is that the massive volume of information available on the Internet causes people to want the information they receive to be condensed down it its essential elements so they can glean what they want or need to glean and move on to the next topic they want to or need to learn about. Carr says this affects his reading and thinking habits -- instead of immersing himself in a lengthy thought process to consider information and develop his own knowledge, he now wants bare bones information in a rapid fire manner. And he says that other thinkers he knows have experienced the same tendencies to want just the facts before moving on to a new topic.
Certainly information overload has been amplified with the Internet, and many would say with the blogosphere in particular. It has itself been the topic of many an article or blog post, as has the converse desire to get away from a constant flow of information. And information overload is certainly an issue to consider as the Internet continues to integrate into people's daily lives around the world.
But that said, I will challenge Carr on several points in his article. One, he assumes that reducing an intake of information to sound bytes makes a person "stupid" (to borrow his word). I dispute this. Certainly a person can be less informed about an issue if s/he merely gleans sound bytes rather than examining an issue in depth, but whether this lack of immersion leads to "stupidity" is I think an open question -- a question that rests in part on how one defines stupidity, and also on the idea that reliance on sound bytes as sources of information makes a person stupid. While Carr may be correct in connecting sound bytes to stupidity, he never fully addresses this connection. And it is a connection I find open to debate -- depending upon a person's needs or circumstances, perhaps a sound byte is all s/he needs to gain the info s/he wants.
Also, is Google to blame? Why? Is it the fact that Google is the search mechanism of choice for many people? With McLuhan in mind, to what extent is Google responsible for shaping the information a person encounters, and to what extent is it just the delivery mechanism of information that is available on the Internet? Carr gets into these questions, but I found his explanation of why Google should be treated as a main suspect in causing information overload lacking. He seemed to simply assume that, since there is a lot of information on the Internet, and since Google is the main portal to the Internet for many people, Google is thus responsible for overloading people with information. While I don't disagree with this view, I don't see an inherent connection between Google an information overload. It is just one possible connection that rests on how a person accesses the Internet (Google, Yahoo, some other search portal), and how much information s/he takes in from the Internet.
Last but not least, I do think people are frequently able to discern for themselves whether a sound byte's worth of information will be adequate to their needs, or whether they need a more in-depth discussion of an issue. And depending upon what they are looking for, they know to turn to a source that meets their needs -- say for example a newspaper website to quickly get up to speed on the day's events, or a book for an in-depth examination of an issue. Besides Google, people in the CSU, Chico community can and do turn to the Meriam Library's catalog and research guides for targeted, scholarly information. And library use is expanding, not just at Chico State, but throughout the United States generally. The Pew Internet and American Life Project, for example, reports that members of Generation Y turn to their public libraries in greater numbers than any of their preceding generations:
With their libraries as guides, these Gen Y'ers will be well equipped to find information they want or need while avoiding unnecessary info that would only increase information overload.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen